From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, has said the House will pass the 2024 Appropriation Bill on Saturday, December 30.
Abbas, who disclosed this at Tuesday’s plenary, said the House committees yet to submit the report of their budget defence sessions to the Appropriation Committee, are expected to do so forthwith, while every issues relating to budget defence and harmonisation are expected to be completed between now and December 30.
President Bola Tinubu had, on November 29, presented an Appropriation Bill of N N27,503,404,073,861 christened Budget of Renewed Hope to a joint session of the National Assembly.
The Appropriation Bill consists of N1,376,352,359,690 statutory transfer, N8,490,960,606,831 for debt servicing; N9,918,248,229,600 for recurrent ( non debt) expenditure; while the sum of N7,717,842,877,740 only is for contribution to the development fund for capital expenditure.
A further breakdown of the budget indicates that the Ministry of Defence is to get a total sum of N308, 235,451, 796 for capital expenditure and N1,270,214,867, 282 for recurrent in the 2024 fiscal year. While the Ministry of Agriculture and Food security will get N222,537, 634, 701 and N110, 178,278, 864 for capital and recurrent expenditure respectively.
Similarly, the Ministry of Works was allocated N521, 324, 938, 938 for capital and N39, 374, 777,404 for recurrent expenditure; while the Ministry of Education has a proposal of N265, 461, 353,682 as capital vote and N857, 304,663, 617 for recurrent.
Also, the Ministry of Health and Social welfare got N304, 428,594, 777 as capital vote and N672, 382, 409, 850 for recurrent expenditure. In the same vein, the Ministry of Power has N 78, 794,746, 687 and N7,218, 123,325 proposal for capital and recurrent expenditure respectively.
For the Presidency, it is N60,535, 827, 133 for capital expenditure and N85,413, 321,897 for recurrent. While for statutory transfers the National Assembly will get
N197,932,625,616; National Judicial Council (NJC) NI65,000,000; National Delta Development Commission (NDDC) N324,844,833046; North East Development Commission (NEDC) N126,936, 316, 904 and Universal Basic Education (UBEC) N251,474,292,062.
The House, after a debate on the general principles of the Appropriation Bill, passed it for second reading, on December 1, and thereafter embarked on 18-day break to enable Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) appear before relevant committees to defend their budget estimates.